POLITICO Playbook PM: House and Senate gone for the week, as shutdown drags on

The U.S. Capitol is visible behind signs as Air Traffic and Pilot unions protest the government shutdown on Capitol Hill in on Thursday, Jan. 10. | Andrew Harnik/AP Photo

THE HOUSE IS GONE, so this will become the longest shutdown in American history tonight at midnight. THE HOUSE sent a bill to the president to pay federal employees after the shutdown.

-- CONGRESS WILL NEED an action-forcing event to get the government open. There are zero negotiations going on at the moment.

SNEAK PEEK … PRESIDENT TRUMP is hosting an border security roundtable this afternoon at the White House. The participants

SARAH FERRIS and HEATHER CAYGLE: “Congress leaves town as federal workers miss their first paycheck”: “With no headway made over funding President Donald Trump’s border wall, Republican and Democratic leaders have begun to take seriously the president’s threat to declare a national emergency to bypass Congress and secure billions of dollars for a border barrier. No bipartisan talks are scheduled, and the president and Democratic leaders have not budged an inch from their position in three weeks.

“Trump’s executive action, which could be announced as early as Friday, would set off a scramble of legal action by House Democrats. Republicans are divided over whether to restrain the president: Some believe it would claw away power from Congress, but others think it will be an elegant way out of the shutdown.” POLITICO

CNN’S ABBY PHILLIP (@abbydphillip): “Grassley on whether Trump should declare a national emergency via @mkraju: ‘I think the president should not do it. I think as a member of congress I ought to be very selfish about the constitutional powers that we have to appropriate money. I think it might be a bad precedent.’”

L.A. TIMES’ SARAH WIRE: “California water projects could be tapped to pay for Trump’s border wall”: “On his way to the Texas border Thursday, Trump was presented with 13 Army Corps of Engineers projects for which Congress has allocated money … [Rep. John Garamendi] said he had been told that a series of specific California projects were targeted, some of which are in his congressional district north and west of Sacramento. …

“Several of the projects Garamendi said were identified have been in the works for years if not decades, and some are in their final stages. … Together the California projects total $2.46 billion. The projects identified in Puerto Rico total $2.5 billion, Garamendi said. … Californians in Congress from both parties said Thursday they’d oppose taking the funds from the state projects.” LAT

THE IMPACT … BEN WHITE (@morningmoneyben): “Via S&P on the economic cost of the #Shutdown: ‘It will only take another two weeks to cost the U.S. economy more than the $5.7 billion that the White House requested for the border wall.’”

-- AP’S ELLEN KNICKMEYER and KIM CHANDLER: “Federal work at Superfund sites suspended during shutdown”: “The government shutdown has suspended federal cleanups at Superfund sites around the nation and forced the cancellation of public hearings, deepening the mistrust and resentment of surrounding residents who feel people in power long ago abandoned them to live among the toxic residue of the country’s factories and mines.” AP

-- “‘There’s no money’: Shutdown freezes HUD funds for low-income senior citizens,” by NBC’s Suzy Khimm and Laura Strickler: “The few federal employees left at HUD have been scouring the books, looking for a last-minute solution to fund hundreds of affordable housing contracts that have expired under the shutdown.” NBC

-- WAPO’S ALLYSON CHIU: “‘A travesty to this nation’: People are destroying Joshua trees in Joshua Tree National Park”: “Shared widely on social media Thursday, the photos have sparked outrage over the plight of national parks that remain open amid a partial government shutdown, leaving them understaffed and vulnerable to the antics of unruly visitors. Parks nationwide have struggled to deal with a variety of issues ranging from rampant littering and overflowing public restrooms to the vandalism of habitats.” WaPo

Happy Friday afternoon. CORRECTION … An item this morning by Eliana Johnson erroneously said Gen. Mark Milley was a West Point graduate. He is the president’s nominee to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs — not yet the chairman. He graduated Princeton and has two master’s degrees, one from Columbia and another from the Naval War College.

A message from AARP:

The big drug companies don’t see us as people. They see us as profits. Americans pay the highest drug prices in the world while they rake in billions. We shouldn’t have to choose between buying medication and buying food. Congress, stop the greed. Cut drug prices now. https://www.aarp.org/Rx

CLICKER … OOPS … BRIAN FALER: “Congress fumbles new tax on Nick Saban's paycheck”: “Lawmakers inadvertently exempted public universities — though not private ones — from a new 21 percent tax they created on nonprofits that pay their employees more than $1 million.

“There are hundreds of million-dollar employees on college campuses, many of them football and basketball coaches. Nick Saban, the University of Alabama football coach who earlier this week lost his bid for a sixth national championship, earned $8.3 million in 2018, according to USA Today, which tracks coaches’ pay. Republicans are now trying to correct the snafu, though there is no sign that Congress will act anytime soon.” POLITICO

NEW … OPRAH will interview former Rep. BETO O’ROURKE in New York on Feb. 5. Who says being a former member of the House won’t get you anywhere?!

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IMMIGRATION FILES … “Trump’s immigration policy has foreign tech talent looking north of the border,” by WaPo’s Emily Rauhala in San Francisco: “Highly skilled foreign workers and the American firms that employ them are in a bit of a visa panic. President Trump has vowed to crack down on the H-1B visa program, which allows 85,000 foreigners per year to work in ‘specialty occupations’ in the United States. But there are no new rules yet, creating a climate of uncertainty and fear, particularly in Silicon Valley.

“Canadian businesses sense an opportunity. The Canadian tech scene has sought for years to compete with Silicon Valley, trying to lure talent north. In the early days of the Trump administration, ‘moving to Canada’ talk surged among Americans, but most foreign workers waited. Now some are making the move.” WaPo

THE NEW MAJORITY -- THE NEW YORKER’S SUSAN GLASSER: “The International Crisis of Donald Trump”: “On Wednesday morning, Eliot Engel, the Democratic congressman from New York who has just taken over the chairmanship of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, sank into an oversized leather chair in his office and told me that his first act as chairman will be to create a new subcommittee devoted to investigating President Trump.

“After the 9/11 attacks, Engel’s predecessors on Foreign Affairs set up a new terrorism subcommittee, which underscored America’s sudden, obsessive focus on countering such threats. That is the subcommittee that Engel will now eliminate in favor of his new investigative panel. There ‘wasn’t a great clamor’ to keep the terrorism panel anymore, Engel told me, whereas there is no end to the Trump foreign-policy scandals that his members are pushing to investigate.” The New Yorker

ANDREW RESTUCCIA: “Former Reagan aide tapped as deputy national security adviser”: “[Charles] Kupperman replaces Mira Ricardel, who was ousted from the position last year after clashing with First Lady Melania Trump’s staff. He is Trump's fourth deputy national security adviser in less than two years.” POLITICO

2020 WATCH -- WAPO’S DAVE WEIGEL: “Left-wing group creates fund to oust Texas Democrat”: “Justice Democrats, a political committee founded after the 2016 election to reshape the Democratic Party through primary challenges, is now working to recruit a challenger to Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Tex.), a seven-term congressman from a strongly Democratic district who’s one of the few anti-abortion-rights voices in the party’s House conference.

“In a statement, the group compared Texas’s 28th Congressional District, which gave the president just 38.5 percent of the vote in 2016, to other districts where left-leaning candidates have unseated incumbents. It is launching a “primary Cuellar fund” to encourage any potential [candidate] that there will be resources if he or she jumps into the race.” WaPo

-- ELENA SCHNEIDER: “Gillibrand hires three senior staffers ahead of Iowa visit”: “The new hires are veteran Democratic operatives Dan McNally, Meredith Kelly and Emmy Bengtson, according to a person familiar with their hiring. McNally will be Gillibrand’s campaign director, while Kelly will serve as Gillibrand’s communications director. Bengtson will be the deputy communications director, leading the digital operation.” POLITICO

THE INVESTIGATIONS -- “A beefed-up White House legal team prepares aggressive defense of Trump’s executive privilege as investigations loom large,” by WaPo’s Carol Leonnig: “The strategy to strongly assert the president’s executive privilege on both fronts is being developed under newly arrived White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, who has hired 17 lawyers in recent weeks to help in the effort.

“Trump aides say White House lawyers are focused on preserving a legal protection routinely invoked by presidents of both parties. But any effort to fight investigators is likely to further inflame Trump’s relationship with Democratic leaders and could lock the administration and Congress in protracted legal standoffs that may ultimately go to the Supreme Court.” WaPo

MEDIAWATCH -- FIRST IN PLAYBOOK: LifeZette, the conservative news website co-founded by Fox News host Laura Ingraham, laid off at least six staffers, including senior editor Mark Tapscott and senior political reporter Brendan Kirby, and at least four other employees, according to a former LifeZette employee and two other sources familiar with the matter. Kirby declined to comment while Tapscott, the former executive editor of the Washington Examiner, would only say he’s “enjoying life” now.

Ingraham sold her majority stake in the website last year to Canadian billionaire Daryl Katz. A source familiar with the situation noted that “LifeZette was sold over a year ago, and Laura has had no involvement in its day to day operations since then.” Maureen Mackey, LifeZette’s managing editor/chief editor, didn’t respond to requests for comment. A woman who picked up the media inquiries phone line at the Katz Group declined to comment.

-- Robin Bravender is now Washington bureau chief for The Newsroom, a nonprofit network of state news sites. She previously was EPA editor at E&E News and is a POLITICO alum.

-- Adam Bozzi, communications director at End Citizens United and a Michael Bennett and Jack Reed alum, and Kelly Bozzi, a teacher at McLean High School, on Thursday welcomed Leo Alden Bozzi, who came in at 7 lbs 1 oz, and joins Dominic and Emilia. Pic... Another pic

ENGAGED -- Maria Harrigan, head of talent acquisition at POLITICO, recently got engaged to Patrick Rowan, an engineer. “Our beloved French bulldog Steve had the @WethedogsDC Instagram handle that day, so Patrick asked the question by posting this to the handle.” Pic... Another pic

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